“This is my room,” I exclaimed excitedly, pointing to a TV in the Lego house I was playing with along with my cousins. I jumped up and down in excitement as my cousin continued placing pieces on the top floor to complete the house, living our 5-year-old dream.
Growing up in our fantasy world was an adventure unlike any other — a world full of imagination that my cousins and I inhabited and a realm where dreams seamlessly intertwined. Our house was a four-story mansion with amusing details that reflected our shared desires. It was a place where limitations in the outside world vanished into nothing.
Even though this house was built with plastic bricks and endless imagination, it held a deeper meaning than just toys. Lego Friends , the brand, had been the world that we wanted to live in forever. The attention to detail in every single house was a canvas on which we were able to draw our dreams and aspirations. We were able to craft stories about how we were going to be in the future and live these imaginary lifes that weren’t limited by the boundaries of our minds. The lines separating fact from fiction were blurred. At five years old, I was able to step into the role of being a chef, teacher, and doctor, depending on my mood. I was too busy using my imagination to worry about the future — I was convinced that things were always going to remain the same. My mind never diverted from the idea that this Lego house represented a future I was going to build for myself.
As I grew up, I started spending hours every day studying in the room that used to be my playroom. Every so often, I would take a glance at the corner of my room with the box of all my Legos—my childhood dreams and imaginations all closed up as though they could never become reality. Soon, I will be off to college, straying even further away from the dreams that once filled my head with wonder, leaving my childhood behind forever. I find myself plagued by a fear that seems to grow each day: the fear of growing up. Soon my entire childhood will be left behind in the room where I grew up thinking about the dreams and desires I have for the future.
As I sit in my room, filled with memories of my past, I cannot help but feel a knot of nostalgia and sadness tightening in my chest. The Legos stopped just being small plastic pieces to me; rather, I felt as if each Lego being built was a step moving forward in my life that eventually built up to the imagination I had when I was little. Most of the dreams were not something that could have happened in reality, like living in a fantasy of sitting in the house of my cousin and me, playing all day never getting tired. Each building of the Lego houses that was crafted over the years represented a whole chapter of my childhood—a time when the future had felt timeless.
I have not found a solution yet, but for now, I have learned to accept that there will always be continuous change in my life, and growing up is a part of these inevitable changes. I’ve accepted that every year will bring forth a new goal, aspiration, imagination and dream. I must realize the goals I have as I grow up and realize that dreams sometimes cannot be a reality.
